SYNCED is a free-to-play co-op shooter where you can take control of enemies and have them fight by your side. Read on to see if this futuristic multiplayer release is worth your time in our review.
SYNCED Review and Score Explanation
SYNCED Score Explanation
| Overall | SYNCED is a textbook example of a game that focused too much on one or two things and ended up sacrificing everything else. Sure, it has solid gameplay, great sound effects, and pretty visuals. But on the other hand, it also has a soulless storyline, boring characters, no music to speak of, and a baffling monetization scheme. So tread carefully. |
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| Story | An easy way to describe SYNCED’s story is that "it’s there." Other than that, SYNCED enjoys absolutely no character development of any kind, with much of its worldbuilding scattered as passive storytelling throughout your missions. You can think of its plot as just flavor text, really. |
| Gameplay | SYNCED's gameplay is an incredibly satisfying mix of shooter and roguelike elements that blend almost seamlessly. It’s the one aspect this game gets right. The gunplay is particularly fulfilling, with incredible feedback from your guns and the enemy receiving more holes than Swiss cheese. As with most free-to-play games, it still requires grinding to get stronger. However, it does away with much of the boring grind by spreading most of it onto content that players will often come back to regardless, such as PvP. |
| Visuals | If there's a point where a game's incredible graphics actually starts to do more harm than good, then SYNCED's visuals are teetering on that precipice. Sure, the game looks pretty as all hell, with a good amount of environmental storytelling on top of it. But, due to its relatively low contrast models and the game's fast pace, you’ll find yourself shooting at your teammates or ally summons. The only silver lining is that there's no friendly fire. |
| Audio | Loud, punchy, and heart-racing; SYNCED's sound effects raise your roguelike shooter experience to the next level. Even the game's voice acting is excellent, so long as you ignore the cringey and overly dramatic dialogue the characters often spout in and out of combat. However, the background music would certainly appreciate a bit of a volume boost, as it's often too soft to hear amidst all the noises of unloading guns and screaming baddies. |
| Value for Money | For the great and affordable price of absolutely free, anybody can enjoy SYNCED regardless of their salary or financial burdens. However, while new characters can be unlocked simply by paying for a set amount of real-life money, certain weapons can only be obtained by participating in SYNCED's gacha system, which is plagued with incredibly appalling rates. |
SYNCED Review: All Style, No Substance
As a big fan of Snowbreak: Containment Zone, I was excited to play SYNCED when it was released. Unlike Snowbreak, which aimed to mix the third-person shooter experience with mobile RPG mechanics and give it a mirror-like polish, SYNCED had its eyes on going much further with the formula. And fortunately, they were able to achieve their goals relatively well. SYNCED's gameplay is quite enjoyable. At the very least, motivating myself to spend a few hours on nothing but the grind didn't result in a feeling of emptiness.
On the other hand, their efforts in creating an incredible gameplay experience cost them the game's other aspects, such as writing, design, and consideration for their players. In particular, SYNCED suffers from a story as flat as your induction stove top. Even if it’s not the main reason people will play a shooter, its plot is still worth considering, as it’s the context in which you can orient your motivations or goals. Think of the countless people invested into the backstories of the characters from Overwatch or Apex Legends.
Other than that, the matchmaking times for the main campaign can take longer than a cigarette break, and gacha rates are so bad that one has to wonder if they took inspiration from Apex Legends' appalling loot boxes.
Well, at least with regards to the latter, the pity for the highest rarity drop is at a very respectable 60 pulls. In that respect, it’s already way, way, way better than Apex Legends.
Despite its issues, SYNCED is still quite a fun game. Dropping into a difficult map to play with friends is a hectic experience that'll leave some good memories for everybody, even if the result is a wipeout. So, do give SYNCED a try.
SYNCED Full Game Review
Pros of SYNCED
| Things SYNCED Got Right |
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 The Roguelike Shooter Experience Is Great Loads of (Passive) Worldbuilding Lower Rarity Weapons Are Decently Strong Already |
The Roguelike Shooter Experience Is Great
The promotional material for SYNCED mainly focused on your ability to control your enemies, the Nanos, and use them against their own kind. This is done by gouging larger Nanos called Primes a new breathing hole with a gun, and then follow that up by stabbing their half-dead carcass with a knife (now THAT’S what I call persuasion). Seriously, you just beat them to within an inch of their life, stab them and that gives you control over them somehow. While that prospect alone seems like a captivating hook to get people interested in the game, the actual charm of SYNCED lies elsewhere.
SYNCED has an extensive loadout customization system you can use to personalize your Runners, your characters in this game. These customizations include selecting your primary, secondary, and melee weapons, customizing them with attachments, and equipping them with Runner Mods that can either increase their performance or endow them with new abilities. You can also select which Nano your Runner will summon on the battlefield. But even with the amount of freedom that its customization provides you, it’s nothing compared to the possibilities that the Meridian Exchanges system does.
The Meridian Exchange system is SYNCED's roguelike mechanic. It works by taking your hard-earned Radia, a currency which you can collect by defeating Nanos or from deposits across the map, and providing you with a choice between two randomly selected mods that you can equip. The effects of these mods vary in nature, from forcing enemies to drop explosives when they die to increasing the range of your melee weapons. Although it's entirely possible to get mods that do not fit your playstyle or loadout at all, it's that random nature that can force players to play a little differently each time.
And that's a great thing. After all, otherwise, it would just become stale quickly.
Loads of (Passive) Worldbuilding
SYNCED's storytelling is about as bare as the bones of some prime baby back ribs after dinner. To say that its plot contains little to appreciate is an understatement. It's basically nothing but a series of events that serve as the driving force for you to take missions at different locations. No character development ever transpires, nor are there any significant interactions between the characters.
However, like Doom 2016 and Eternal, there's a boatload of passive worldbuilding and environmental storytelling. Lore is provided through tidbits of recordings and literature that you can find scattered throughout the world. Most of these, particularly the recordings, are fully and adequately voice-acted, set with the emotional tones that each circumstance demands.
The locations where you undertake your missions are also designed for maximum immersion. Each area is rife with signs that it used to be inhabited by humans, with the ruined vestiges left behind by the rise of Nanos. You could find scattered papers near work desks, debris near ventilated (figuratively speaking) walls, and even stuffed animals in waiting areas. Although these are minor details in the grand scheme of things, it's the little things that elevate the experience to another level.
Through these small details, an attentive and persevering player can fit together the broader picture of the in-game universe. It paints a picture of a world filled with dubious scientific research done below the surface, even after (or perhaps because of) the fall of a civilization.
Lower Rarity Weapons Are Decently Strong Already
SYNCED’s gacha system is focused mostly on allowing you to obtain more powerful weapons, and it encourages its players to invest their hard-earned pocket money through use of limited banners and such. Being suckers for terms like "limited" or "seasonal," we are prone to fall for their provocations and pay for a chance to obtain these items to flex and play with.
However, for those with tight pockets (such as I), there's no need to worry excessively about your pulls. There are four tiers for every weapon in the game. The weakest ones are the common-tier ones, which often have no other effects other than "left click to shoot" and "press R to reload". These are then preceded by rares, epics, and legendaries, all of which are only differentiated by the potency of their abilities and their specs. And SYNCED's more easily obtained weapons, particularly the rare and epic ones, are already enough to arm you with enough teeth to get through the thick crust of SYNCED's content.
You can also upgrade these items’ specs using Weapon Chips, which can be farmed with enough diligence.
While these rare and epic weapons ultimately lose to legendary gear on effects and specs, players can still make up for the difference by playing more strategically. Brute-forcing each encounter shouldn't be at the top of the ways you should play SYNCED anyway, as you will often run into walls that even powerful equipment can't punch through.
Cons of SYNCED
| Things That SYNCED Can Improve |
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Progression is a Grind of Its Own Dead Ambience Annoying Monetization |
Progression is a Grind of Its Own
Going through the game's main campaign includes clearing its Dead Sectors, which effectively function as its stages. These can be played either by yourself or with a three-man team. Now, unless you're a lone wolf or always have friends ready to play the game, you'll often find yourself matching with strangers for it.
There's nothing wrong with that. If you're a player of Deep Rock Galactic, you'll know that generally speaking, most players in a PvE environment are either quite friendly or don't talk at all. Sure, they might make questionable decisions, such as unlocking too many doors simultaneously, causing the team to get swarmed by enemies). Still, it's pretty rare to see people complain about it over chat unless they're the vocal type.
But here's the catch: as you progress through the main campaign, the game's incremental scaling and generalized stage rewards discourage you from replaying previous areas. While this may be fine for those who have progressed to where the majority of SYNCED's player base is, it could spell trouble for those outside that curve.
As an extreme example, imagine you're a new player six months down the road, when the hype for the game has died down somewhat. Since you're just starting out, you opt for playing with a team instead of solo on your Main Campaign run. So, you head over to the briefing table and look for other players to play with.
Several minutes later, you find none.
Why? Simply because nobody is incentivized to replay an early campaign mission. Sure, you might chance upon a handful of people grinding that stage to look for a specific Runner Mod they need. Still, most people would prefer to progress through more challenging and rewarding stages.
And that's not good. NExT Studios should at least implement scaling rewards and specific mission-based loot to scatter their players across every campaign stage. That way, even those who are just starting out can benefit from the help of others.
Dead Ambience
Music is one of the most important aspects of a video game. Sure, many people tend to judge a game primarily for its visuals, but in my (humble) opinion, music is equally important. It's often the deciding factor in turning a 9/10 game, with incredible visuals, storytelling, and price, into the perfect 10/10 masterpiece.
I'm not saying that SYNCED's music isn't bad at all. In fact, it captures that post-apocalyptic sci-fi vibe really well, especially with the theme's contrast and the relaxing tunes they use at your home base.
That is if you can hear it.
SYNCED's background music, particularly in combat, is soft. Quiet. Heck, it's not even wrong to say it's completely inaudible. Even with the appropriate volume slider turned waaaaaaaay up in the setting, an average player who doesn't have superhuman hearing wouldn't notice a thing.
It's such a shame, really. SYNCED's fast-paced and hectic combat deserves a banging soundtrack to accompany the intense action. But instead, all we hear is dead air.
Annoying Monetization
Can you guess the first thing you'll see upon entering the game? Okay, fine, that's the main menu, but what comes after that? In Snowbreak, you’ll see the main lobby, where your Valkyrie will greet you (or admonish you if you log in too late). In Deep Rock Galactic, it's the space station. But in SYNCED? It's the launch bundle they're selling for $40.
SYNCED is a free-to-play game, that's true. They need the money from their microtransactions to keep the developers' families fed and to pay the rent; that's also true. But those who throw their bundles at their players' faces the moment they get into the game never fail to be annoying.
On top of that, though their bundles are all quite reasonably priced, their gacha rates are, in a word, confusing. The highest rarity weapons drop at a rate of one for every 500 pulls, which is easily one of the worst in the industry. It matches Apex Legends' Heirloom rates, but is offensively more pay-to-win due to these items being easily the strongest equipment you can possess. And instead of having the same hard pity count of 500 to match their rates like in Apex Legends, SYNCED's pity is set at the weird, almost esoteric, number of 60. The prices are slightly above the norm for these kinds of gacha systems, so that’s nothing to write home about, but the decision for these rates is just strange.
Other Minor Gripes
The combat in SYNCED is quite fast-paced. Each area has its players swarmed with dozens of Nanos that they’ll have to defeat in short order lest they, you know, die. Fortunately, players are equipped with several tactical abilities that will help them quickly dispatch their foes. With up to three allied Nanos on the field simultaneously, each resulting encounter is hectic and exhilarating.
So why would they need to design each character to have the reload speed as slow as molasses? Is it for realism? If so, then they achieved that wonderfully. However, that long and realistic reload time conflicts with the game's quick pace, periodically grinding each encounter to a halt as you run around with your tail between your legs while you wait for your character to fit the magazine into his rifle. The game would certainly appreciate a less-than-realistic reload time to maintain its pace. Besides, it’s an odd place to aim for realism in a world where you’re able to stab a fictional conglomeration of nanomachines and force them to fight on your side.
Also, there's no "Claim All" option for the quest and achievement rewards. So, have fun claiming each prize for every mission, one painstaking click at a time.
SYNCED Overview & Premise
The story of SYNCED is set in the future following a cataclysmic event known as the Collapse,
where advanced nanomachines, known as Nanos, have turned rogue, almost extinguishing all human life on the planet. It focuses on the mysteries surrounding the catastrophic event being uncovered by the ragtag crew of mercenaries known as the Runners. They are combatants augmented with a technology that allows them to control Nanos and have them fight by their side.
You play as one of these Runners in their quest to study the origins of the Collapse and find the resources needed by the last remaining human settlements.
Who Should Play SYNCED?
SYNCED is Recommended if You Enjoy:
• Apex Legends
• Remnant 2
• Tom Clancy's The Division
Those who enjoy cooperative shooters that require strategizing will surely enjoy SYNCED. However, the game does have quite a lot of weak points. Its story is flat, its characters are stale manifestations of certain personality tropes, the music is basically non-existent, and it's pretty grindy.
However, if you’re just looking for a fresh game with fast-paced and hectic gunplay, then SYNCED is the game for you.
SYNCED Trailer
Game8 Reviews
SYNCED Product Information
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| Title | SYNCED |
|---|---|
| Release Date | September 8, 2023 |
| Developer | NExT Studios |
| Publisher | Level Infinite |
| Supported Platforms | PC, PS5 |
| Genre | Shooter |
| Number of Players | 1-3 |
| ESRB Rating | N/A |
| Official Website | SYNCED Website |
